Modi debuts RuPay – to buy sweets

Mr Modi officially launched the UAE roll-out of the RuPay card – an Indian card payment scheme similar to Visa and Mastercard – at Emirates Palace.

He became the first person to use RuPay in the Emirates, when he used a card to purchase a box of sweets at a stall in the exclusive hotel.The credit and debit cards, whose name blends the words ‘rupee’ and ‘payment’, were launched in India four years ago. Since then, 500 million people in the country have subscribed to it, and more than half of India’s one billion debit and credit cards now go through the RuPay system.RuPay is little known outside India, but its surge within the country has challenged the dominance of US giants such as Visa and MasterCard and it is now expanding overseas, with Singapore and Bhutan among the other places to adopt it.